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At the beginning of the 1970s, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) began to study the building of a new supercomputer to replace their DEC PDP-10 KA-10, by a far more powerful machine, with a funding of the DARPA[2]. This project was named "Super-Foonly", and was developed by a team led by Phil Petit, Jack Holloway, and Dave Poole[2][6].
In 1974, the DARPA cut the funding, and a large part of the team went to DEC to develop the PDP-10 model KL10, based on the Super-Foonly project[2].

But Dave Poole, with Phil Petit and Jack Holloway, preferred to found the Foonly Company in 1976[4], to try to build a series of computers based on the Super-Foonly project.

During the early 1980s, after the releasing of their first and only F1 supercomputer, Foonly built and sold some F2, F4 and F5 low cost DEC PDP-10 compatibles machines[4][2][5].

In 1983, after the cancellation of the DEC Jupiter Project, Foonly tried to propose a new Foonly F1, but it was eclipsed by the SC Group company and their Mars project, and the company never quite recovered[2].

The Foonly F1 was the first and most powerful Foonly supercomputer, but also the only one being built of its kind. It was based on the Super Foonly project designs, aimed to be the fastest DEC PDP-10 compatible[2], but using ECL gates rather than TTL, and without the extended instruction set[7][8].
It was developed with the help of Triple-I, its first customer, and began operations in 1978[4].